A Beautiful Gift
by sinemoras09
Summary: I know in my heart what is true. God sent you to me, and you are my only comfort. Sylar X Maya. AU. Written after Lizards, episode 2, before Maya and Sylar actually interacted onscreen.


"Alejandro!" she screams, and she throws herself on his dead body. "Alejandro! Alejandro!"

Sylar grabs her by the elbows and yanks her toward him. Already the black is oozing out of her eyes and he can't figure out how to stop it. He knows he needs to hold her, calm her down, but her voice curdles in her throat and he starts to feel the darkness welling up from inside him, too.

He slams her against the wall and grabs her face, shoving his forehead against hers. "Stop crying," he says. "Stop crying, stop crying, stop crying." The pressure behind his eyes is unbearable, and his vision is clouded over with black.

And then something happens: a white light starts to bleed out from inside of him, and he's able to see again. He opens his eyes and sees her staring up at him, eyes closed and head tilted back as if in prayer. When he lets go of her face, he can see the black-blue bruise of his handprints marring her jaw.

"I made a mistake. I shouldn't have killed your brother, his ability means nothing to me," Sylar says. "Not unless unless I drag you along. But that would slow me down, and we can't have that, can we? Maybe I should just kill you too--I'd be doing the world a favor."

She doesn't react. He cocks his head, slightly.

"You don't speak English," he says.

She looks up at him with wide eyes. He touches her cheek.

"Like sheep going to slaughter," he murmurs, and then he pulls away. "Today's your lucky day."

He turns to leave.

"No," she says, and she clutches at his arms. She starts babbling in Spanish, desperation in her eyes. "No, no, no."

His head snaps toward hers, and back again at Alejandro's body, his dead eyes black like tar.

"You don't know I killed your brother, do you?" he asks. He studies her face, then brushes back a strand of hair that's stuck to her forehead.

She grips his arms tightly and starts to sob, words tumbling out of her like water. Sylar's mouth tightens.

"I guess I'll have to learn Spanish, then," he says, and lets her cry against his shoulder.

.

She cries at night, and Sylar learns the hard way he has to sleep next to her to contain the plague. She clings to him, and he intuits that she sees him as her salvation. He wonders idly how far he can push it.

"You're a virgin, aren't you?" Sylar says, and he lets his hand rest softly around her waist. She looks up at him with her dumb brown eyes, and more than anything he wants to fuck her. Crush her. Wrench her in half. But he doesn't want to hurt her, and it takes all of his self-control to ignore the hard knot of arousal rising from his middle and kiss her gently instead, his hands sliding under her shirt.

"No," she says. It's the only English word she knows. "No, no, no."

Under her shirt, he cups her breasts, thumbs brushing against her nipples. She squirms, but he can feel them start to harden beneath his fingers.

"No, no, por favor," she says, and she bats him away. "No." Her voice is a pleading whisper, oily black tears starting to roll down the sides of her face. "No, no!"

She's panicking now, the black overtaking her, and Sylar grabs her by the arms and pushes her back down.

"Shh," he says, and he kisses her brow, just above her eyes. He murmurs into her hair and drinks in the blackness, the white light of his body coursing through him and into hers. He knows she doesn't understand what's happening, but she trusts him, lets him slide his hands between her legs. He presses the pads of his fingers against her clit, stroking her until the blackness begins to fade. "Shh, shhh."

When she comes, it's like an affirmation. The blackness disappears and she clings to him, shaking and burying her face against his neck.

He holds her only because it's practical. He can stop the plague quicker that way.

.

Already his mind begins to puzzle out the syntax of her language, assimilating and reconstructing the rules that govern her native tongue, and it only takes a couple hours of paging through the English-Spanish dictionary before he can speak the language perfectly. He finally understands what she's saying, but he doesn't bother speaking to her. It would only ruin her perception of him.

"You have a beautiful gift," Maya says, in Spanish. "God finally answered my prayers."

She touches his arm, the whites of her eyes quivering with holy light.

"God works through you," she says, softly. "You keep me safe, you hold me in the night. You restored my faith. I would be lost without you."

He traces the delicate chain of her cross on her neck, letting his fingers linger over her throat. Against his will, he imagines his hands reflexively tightening around her neck, and how the blackness would flow out of her like blood.

"I know in my heart what is true--God sent you to me," Maya says. "God knew what would happen when He took away my Alejandro, and you are my only comfort."

Sylar turns to look at her. Her hair is tangled and her eyes are bleary from crying. He can almost see the blackness threatening to spill over.

"Show me your God," Sylar says in English, and kisses her softly.

He stopped hating himself a long time ago.


End file.
